Poor picture quality - new installation

[chriscaton 0]

I am getting poor picture quality (ghosting - water shed, tearing) from four cameras and need some advice:

 

The setup is this:

This is a stockyard where cattle are bought/sold/auctioned.

 

Front area has 4 analog cameras that use cat5e with baluns for each run back to DVR. average run length 150ft (picture quality is really good on these- but not perfect)

Monitor is standard TV using VGA port

DVR is Q-see 8 channel with 1TB hard drive.

 

The rear area is approx 750 ft from the DVR (which is in the front area)

I have a single cat5e running from DVR to a small building in back (junction) where it splits out on individual cat5e's to each of four cameras. The video signal is straight spliced at the junction passing through from back to front. Power is inserted on two pair of each of the camera cat5e cables at this junction.

 

so basically i have 4 video signals coming down the single cat5e cable from the junction to the DVR.

 

If i unplug power to three of the rear cameras, the other one clears up.

 

I have tried a ground loop isolator but not sure i even have the right version of that part (there are several different flavors)

 

keeping in mind that is is about 750 to each camera from the DVR, is the next step to add three more cat5e cables direct to each camera to separate the video signals? OR should I pull RG6 runs for each camera?

 

Trying to figure out how to identify the next and appropriate step to resolve this. Site is about 30 miles away, so i need to have plan in place before visiting (and perhaps a backup plan).

 

Thanks in advance

[tip_ex 0]

Hello.

 

I hate working with ballun. The money I save by installing them, i lose it with troubleshooting time. So I prefer Coax by far.

 

Usually when I have to troubleshoot a site, what I do is i bring down one camera and connect it to the roll of coax and to the DVR and see that the signal is nice and clean. The customer agrees then to replace CAT5 by Coax.

[Blake CCTV 3]

This could be a couple of things, some cheap Baluns do give interference but this shouldn't affect the other pictures, it may be some sort of ground loop issue; although Baluns claim to give ground loop isolation it still occurs.

I would personally check the power supply voltage at the camera locations, there can be quite a volt drop on cat 5 especially if you are using 12Vdc I prefer to use 24VAC when I can.

When you disconnect one camera there will be more voltage for the other cameras and the camera with the longest cable run will put the biggest strain on the supply.

[hardwired 0]

This is a common issue (ground loop) with 12 Volt cameras. The easiest next step to try would be to use individual 12VDC transformers to feed each camera, this can often fix this issue.

[chriscaton 0]

I have tried separate power supplies with no luck. I don't think it's specifically a power issue. I did take a 750ft piece of siamese RG59 and connect to one of the rear cameras and it works perfectly. SO... will be installing four individual runs of coax. I will still power them locally from the cat5 at the rear junction.

 

measure once...cut twice

[Blake CCTV 3]

If you have a supply voltage issue at the camera end then using the shotgun cable will give better results as the 2 core for the power will have a much bigger cross sectional area (the cable is thicker than cat 5) so there will be less volt drop meaning that the camera will have the correct amount of voltage to work.

If you have a voltmeter then check the supply voltage at the camera end, it may be fine at the PSU but a lot less once it has travelled down the cable to your camera.

Another option if possible is the move the power supplies to the camera location.